Tank Nuked! All Fish Dead

[WVNed]

These fish have been showing signs of illness (disease/parasite/bacteria/etc) going back to at least December 2019. I did not read further back in the OP posts to see if illness symptoms were present longer than that.

Was this the cause of this mass death? Unknown, but it’s certainly high on the suspect list, if not the #1 suspect. It’s the only potential cause that has factual historical data to support it.

So they were all fine and symptom free and then this diverse group of fish all suddenly died on the same day 1 or 2 days later of a disease.
I don't think that is likely.

 

[zalick]

So they were all fine and symptom free and then this diverse group of fish all suddenly died on the same day 1 or 2 days later of a disease.
I don't think that is likely.

I doubt they were symptom free. That’s an assumption without much, if any, support. The OP has been posting about various illness symptoms (sores, spots, etc) since at least December 2019 and has lost fish in that time frame.

 

[brandon429]

I’m moving to Montana soon, I read they have ultra winters.
as in moreso than Texas

ive been reading about Montana long enough to know I want to be there

how to get there


where to live

and in all the preps, they warn me about the winters because I have dogs that currently live outside.


anything I read about Montana on this board for months in fact mentions the harsh winters, there’s even a forum dedicated to keeping dogs alive best in the winter, in Montana, and the top stickies on the board say to bring the dogs inside when it’s minus thirty.


but heck, on the block I’m moving to, there’s a house that’s been there for fifty years and any dogs he owns can stay outside during winter, they don’t die from that, only fat old age after many litters. That sounds better than me bringing in my dogs, that’s a hassle.

All other houses on the block less old bring in their dogs during the winter



so, when I get there and lose six of my eight dogs this coming winter where does the sympathy belong, w me or animals I was warned about when it was still warm?

there’s no way this post can be offensive. It’s key words are sympathy, Montana, dogs, and winter and enough forewarning that boiling the fish couldn’t have been more causative than holding course no matter what despite reading about quaratine over a hundred times before during and after the tank build.

Miamireef, September, that’s buy new fish date.

 

[LiamPM]

Sorry to read about your loss.

Personally, id be swaying towards an issue with oxygen one way or another, either directly with a power failure or pump failure or indirectly from an algae bloom or the likes. For something to effect fish and only fish it usually points towards oxygen. Invertebrates in general tend to be more sensitive to water parameters or unwanted chemicals etc so i would expect them to show signs/death if this was the case. Corals cna usually hint at poor water quality way before fish do and you say they are also looking ok.

Id find it unusual for that number of fish to all die within 2 days if it was parasitic too. Yes velvet and brook are very quick killers but without having adding something just before going awway id say its unlikely to be that. The quick parasitic killers rarely wait much time before infecting and causing damage and Ich rarely kills a large group of fish off at the exact same time like that.

Either way, im sorry to read of this.

 

[WVNed]

I doubt they were symptom free. That’s an assumption without much, if any, support. The OP has been posting about various illness symptoms (sores, spots, etc) since at least December 2019 and has lost fish in that time frame.

So have I. They didn't all do it at the same time though. Except for a power outage that killed 7 of mine at once. Since the OP has been honest about the condition of fish in the past I assume he is now too. He said they were fine.

 

[Cell]

What really throws a wrench in figuring this out is the living chromis. How did a chromis survive when all other fish were wiped?

 

[WVNed]

When I lost the 7 fish there were 30 in the tank. Some were less tolerant of the low oxygen I think. The 7 fish were 3 different kinds and all of each of those kinds died.

 

[Ben Pedersen]

Also


the folks with shiny reefs who recommend others skip fallow and quarantine and only post pics of their own tanks as the proof are 78% the cause of this loss here.


here’s some tanks building up massive disease but too young to express it yet, check back when the tanks hit eight months

this thread here below is certainly killing fish, it’s just in the prep stages takes a few months to reveal

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/h...e-track-your-tank-out-to-eight-months.757418/

Wow.. 78%... Your pretty good if you can calculate that statistic. :)

 

[Ben Pedersen]

What really throws a wrench in figuring this out is the living chromis. How did a chromis survive when all other fish were wiped?

Right... Many chromic varieties are sensitive to environmental change.

 

[BostonReefer300]

I’m moving to Montana soon, I read they have ultra winters.
as in moreso than Texas

ive been reading about Montana long enough to know I want to be there

how to get there


where to live

and in all the preps, they warn me about the winters because I have dogs that currently live outside.


anything I read about Montana on this board for months in fact mentions the harsh winters, there’s even a forum dedicated to keeping dogs alive best in the winter, in Montana, and the top stickies on the board say to bring the dogs inside when it’s minus thirty.


but heck, on the block I’m moving to, there’s a house that’s been there for fifty years and any dogs he owns can stay outside during winter, they don’t die from that, only fat old age after many litters. That sounds better than me bringing in my dogs, that’s a hassle.

All other houses on the block less old bring in their dogs during the winter



so, when I get there and lose six of my eight dogs this coming winter where does the sympathy belong, w me or animals I was warned about when it was still warm?

there’s no way this post can be offensive. It’s key words are sympathy, Montana, dogs, and winter and enough forewarning that boiling the fish couldn’t have been more causative than holding course no matter what despite reading about quaratine over a hundred times before during and after the tank build.

Miamireef, September, that’s buy new fish date.

What? I'm confused

 

[Ben Pedersen]

I'm very sorry about the loss of your fish. I have no speculation as to what caused it.. Is the chromis still looking ok?

 

[WVNed]

Does anything bad happen when they are 22 months? I missed all the other deadlines I guess.
Sorry.

Ripclean is doing great.

I got a third lion too.

 

[Gtinnel]

What? I'm confused

I believe the story was to show that if someone was warned that they are doing something that could cause their pets to die then there is no reason to feel sympathy for them.

 

[BostonReefer300]

I believe the story was to show that if someone was warned that they are doing something that could cause their pets to die then there is no reason to feel sympathy for them.

Ugh

 

[WVNed]

I believe the story was to show that if someone was warned that they are doing something that could cause their pets to die then there is no reason to feel sympathy for them.

Pathetic and disgusting.

 

[Cell]

Although it's doubtful that electricity is to blame in this instance, I get concerned when I see many in this forum say that fish aren't affected by current in the water because they're "not grounded" and the like. A person floating in a pond struck by lighting can get electrocuted. A person floating in saltwater can also get electrocuted, although everything else being equal, it will be less severe than freshwater because saltwater has much greater conductivity than fresh and most of the electricity will follow the path of least resistance. Our tanks are not completely isolated from ground like a bubble in space. Sources of electrical current in a tank will find their way to ground---and some portion of that current will flow through tank inhabitants. A malfunctioning Cobalt heater (NEVER buy those horrible things!) killed a handful of my fish several years ago. It was leaking a lot of current in the water which I discovered when I stuck my hand in the tank to get the dead fish. I was wearing heavy insulated boots at the time and got zapped pretty badly. I confirmed the current issue with a meter. That experience is why I always keep grounding probes in my setups now.

https://aquariumscience.org/index.p... flow can't pass,side of a household circuit.
I think your livestock is more likely to be affected by copper or contaminants released as a result of an electrical fault than shock.

I'm terribly sorry about your loss. I do want to say that I consider an electrical issue very unlikely to have caused this. An electrical device would have needed to fail and release a large amount of toxins into your system to cause rapid fish deaths. It is very difficult to shock a saltwater fish as the water around them is more conductive than they are. This is why electrofishing only works in fresh water.

One thing I want to clarify - stray voltage is a human health issue (shocks) if it gets bad enough, but will not harm the fish as they are not grounded. For decades, this has been implicated in all sorts of aquarium issues, but just as many tanks have issues and don't have stray voltage. Much of what is measured is induced voltage from pumps. Sometimes it is from a bad seal where the cords enter a powerhead. My father was an electrical engineer and he explained it to me this way: birds can perch on a high tension line with no problem because there is no electrical potential to ground. If their wing touches the tower, they would explode...

Jay

 

[BostonReefer300]

https://aquariumscience.org/index.p... flow can't pass,side of a household circuit.
I think your livestock is more likely to be affected by copper or contaminants released as a result of an electrical fault than shock.

Please note that the article you're citing has some misleading information in it. Furthermore, the author's implication that you shouldn't put a grounding plug in your aquarium is downright dangerous---and contradicts his/her assertion that current won't flow through livestock anyway because of the greater conductivity of saltwater vs livestock body. Anyway, bottom line is that if you have source in your aquarium that can throw off enough current, it is a danger to your livestock and you. Again, tanks are not perfectly insulated from ground. Low current is less of an acute concern for livestock, but chronic exposure can lead to problems. (In this thread, the rapid death of that many fish suggests this wasn't the result of chronic low-level electrical exposure.). Regarding the bird on the wire example, the reason the bird isn't getting electrocuted is because the wire is covered in insulating material and the path of least resistance for the current is through the wire---instead of crossing the insulating barrier, going through the birds body, and back through the insulating layer into the wire again. If the bird had one foot on the wire and one foot on a ground wire, the insulating layer and the bird body are now a less costly resistance barriers than the miles of wire the current would otherwise travel through so ZAP!
In any case, this isn't the right thread for a big discussion on electricity and aquariums. I'll get my electrical engineer brother to write up something for me this weekend and I'll post it on a fresh thread.

 

[Reef.]

Please note that the article you're citing has some misleading information in it. Furthermore, the author's implication that you shouldn't put a grounding plug in your aquarium is downright dangerous---and contradicts his/her assertion that current won't flow through livestock anyway because of the greater conductivity of saltwater vs livestock body. Anyway, bottom line is that if you have source in your aquarium that can throw off enough current, it is a danger to your livestock and you. Again, tanks are not perfectly insulated from ground. Low current is less of an acute concern for livestock, but chronic exposure can lead to problems. (In this thread, the rapid death of that many fish suggests this wasn't the result of chronic low-level electrical exposure.). Regarding the bird on the wire example, the reason the bird isn't getting electrocuted is because the wire is covered in insulating material and the path of least resistance for the current is through the wire---instead of crossing the insulating barrier, going through the birds body, and back through the insulating layer into the wire again. If the bird had one foot on the wire and one foot on a ground wire, the insulating layer and the bird body are now a less costly resistance barriers than the miles of wire the current would otherwise travel through so ZAP!
In any case, this isn't the right thread for a big discussion on electricity and aquariums. I'll get my electrical engineer brother to write up something for me this weekend and I'll post it on a fresh thread.

Please link it here incase I miss that thread...very interesting.

 

[Gtinnel]

Regarding the bird on the wire example, the reason the bird isn't getting electrocuted is because the wire is covered in insulating material and the path of least resistance for the current is through the wire---instead of crossing the insulating barrier, going through the birds body, and back through the insulating layer into the wire again.

While I agree with you on most of what you've said this is not true at least around where I live. The transmission lines are not insulated.

Edit- If a power line were insulated (which AFAIK they never are for transmission lines) and a bird was able to touch the power line and the ground at the same time it would still not get shocked because of the insulation.

 

[BostonReefer300]

While I agree with you on most of what you've said this is not true at least around where I live. The transmission lines are not insulated.

Forget the insulating layer in the example. Going through the bird's body "costs" the electricity a lot more than continuing down the energetically cheaper path of the wire. If one of the bird's feet is connected to ground however, all of a sudden going through the bird's body is a lot cheaper energetically